1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a network management system (NMS), and in particular, to a system and method for storing alarm information generated from a network and transferring the alarm information to a plurality of alarm managers.
2. Related Art
A network management system can monitor the state of a communication network all of the time in order to maintain the network in an optimal states, and can collect network state information, alarm information, and traffic data. When network alarm information is not handled efficiently, there can be inconvenience and difficulty.
There is a need to efficiently handle network alarm information. Exemplars of recent efforts include U.S. Pat. No. 6,040,770 to Britton, entitled COMMUNICATION PATH INTEGRITY SUPERVISION IN A NETWORK SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATIC ALARM DATA COMMUNICATION, issued on Mar. 21, 2000, U.S. Pat. No. 5,621,383 to Yoshiyama, entitled RING NETWORK SYSTEM CAPABLE OF DETECTING AN ALARM IN EACH NODE, issued on Apr. 15, 1997, U.S. Pat. No. 6,064,304 to Arrowsmith et al., entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR POLICY-BASED ALARM NOTIFICATION IN A DISTRIBUTED NETWORK MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENT, issued on May 16, 2000, U.S. Pat. No. 6,057,757 to Arrowsmith et al., entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR POLICY-BASED ALARM NOTIFICATION IN A DISTRIBUTED NETWORK MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENT, issued on May 2, 2000, U.S. Pat. No. 5,777,549 to Arrowsmith et al., entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR POLICY-BASED ALARM NOTIFICATION IN A DISTRIBUTED NETWORK MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENT, issued on Jul. 7, 1998, U.S. Pat. No. 5,696,486 to Poliquin et al., entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR POLICY-BASED ALARM NOTIFICATION IN A DISTRIBUTED NETWORK MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENT, issued on Dec. 9, 1997, U.S. Pat. No. 5,768,501 to Lewis, entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR INTER-DOMAIN ALARM CORRELATION, issued on Jun. 16, 1998, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,138,249 to Nolet, entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MONITORING COMPUTER SYSTEMS DURING MANUFACTURING, TESTING AND IN THE FIELD, issued on Oct. 24, 2000.
While these recent efforts provide advantages, I note that they fail to adequately provide a method for efficiently and conveniently handling network alarm information.